Oro (Oron) is a

Lower Cross River language The Lower Cross River languages form a branch of the Cross River languages of Cross River State, Nigeria. They consist of the divergent Obolo language (or Andoni, 200,000 speakers), and the core of the branch, which includes the 4 million speakers ...

Nigeria Nigeria ( ), , ig, Naìjíríyà, yo, Nàìjíríà, pcm, Naijá , ff, Naajeeriya, kcg, Naijeriya officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a country in West Africa. It is situated between the Sahel to the north and the Gulf o ...

. The phonemes of Oron comprise seven oral vowels í, ε, e, a, o, σ, u, five

plosive consonant In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases. The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...

s b, kp, d, t, k, three

nasal consonants In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majorit ...

m, ŋ, n, three

fricative consonant A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...

s f, s, h, two semi-vowel consonants w, y and one

lateral consonant A lateral is a consonant in which the airstream proceeds along one or both of the sides of the tongue, but it is blocked by the tongue from going through the middle of the mouth. An example of a lateral consonant is the English ''L'', as in ''Larr ...

l. The lateral consonant is an unusual feature of Oro and it is not found in most neighbouring varieties. The Oron language does not possess any

affixes In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ar ...

or verb forms to express passive actions; 'he is received' becomes 'they receive him'. Finally, it may be noted that the relative order of the simple Oron sentence is subject-verb-object.

References

Lower Cross River languages Languages of Nigeria Oron languages {{CrossRiver-lang-stub